PAS DE DEUX, a light Woody-Allen-style comedy amid the beauties of Athens

—is teasing a wallet out of a purse on a crowded Athens metro when she notices Miranda, a sensitive beauty out of "The Princess and the Pea" (Skyrah Palli, reel), and falls in love. Miranda escapes her, Becky escapes the purse-owner, and the chase is on—past the MuchaTrella Jazz Band playing our theme song Sweet Sue.

Oops, Becky picks the pocket of a policeman on vacation, her Elmer Fudd, and he’s obsessed with catching her. “My name is Wesley Stankovitch! I don’t care if it doesn’t sound British, I am a police detective with New Scotland Yard—No! I’m on vacation! My pocket has just been picked and I have a photograph of the culprit! Now can I have some men over here!” Duncan Skinner, reel.

When Becky picks the pocket of a Chicago dentist, Tom Alexopoulos, reel, he falls in love with her, and he’s on her trail too.

A dream for the psychiatrist: Miranda sits high up at the crest of the otherwise empty Panathinaiko Stadium. In the distance Becky enters from the street and comes to the near end of the field. “I love you!” she calls. Miranda is impassive. The cops rush in toward them and Becky has to scramble up through the seats and disappear into the trees.

In an open-air cinema Becky tries to hold Miranda's hand. She jerks it away. Becky puts her arm around her and she gets up and changes seats. Becky follows, and from up high we watch as Miranda changes seats, Becky follows, Miranda changes seats, Becky follows.

Becky arranges a dinner for four to introduce Katerina to Mihail. Katerina likes him. Triumph for Becky. She looks across the table at Miranda, but Miranda is gone. Becky chases her out into the night.

Becky will never entirely catch Miranda. “She’s like Mrs Darling in Peter Pan—there’s a kiss in the corner of her mouth her husband can never quite get.” But together they play the comedy of desire.

Jacques
Rivette’s short film Paris s'en va gives an idea of
what we're doing, with the help of Athens. I’m not claiming to be Rivette, but we will do something fun and saleable—sort of a low-budget Grande
Belleza.

When
shooting in Athens, or writing scripts about it, I have been careful not to
emphasize the locale, so as to avoid a clichéd treatment. Here, though, Athens
is a character, a labyrinth, because this is a chase movie—not a wild broad
chase like Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le métro, but one that gets us
around the city, and through some of its most beautiful areas. (If you’ve
forgotten what Zazie looks like there are a few minutes of
it here.)

The movie
will be fun to see, and fun to make, especially for the producers. Summer in
Greece is itself a luxury.

“A man is a poet,” said Paul Valéry, “if
difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if
they deprive him of ideas.” We're going to do a lot with a little.

Our first scene is based on the opening of the masterful Samuel Fuller’s Pickup On South Street (I’m not Fuller either), specifically the hand in the purse. You might like this whole movie—every shot is a poem.